


Take The Reins.

by carolinaa



Series: the b in b99 stands for bisexual [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Closeted Character, Coming Out, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinaa/pseuds/carolinaa
Summary: There are several people that would be there for him, if Jake took the step. But there’s the slim possibility that they won’t be there for him, and that’s enough to keep Jake from opening his mouth.





	Take The Reins.

“You’re very emotionally invested in this,” Holt says, and Jake feels like his blood is turning to icy slush.

He looks at the break room, which he has (badly) hung some rainbow streamers up, where there’s two of those tiny pride flags, one gay and one bi, in a little cup on the desk. It’s, overall, not the most over-the-top, but he wanted to do _something_.

“Too much?” Jake asks.

Holt’s facial expression doesn’t change. “No, I think it’s enjoyable.” Next to him, Rosa nods, raising her eyebrows just a little bit in approval.

Jake accepts this and ducks out before he can give anything away.

 

Pride month is weird for him. He usually avoids going anywhere near the parade, and he’s especially going to try and swerve as far away from it as possible _this_ year, because, well--he’s still a hundred percent sure that he doesn’t need to take any steps in that direction. He’s getting married soon. If he makes it into a big deal now, people are going to think he’s just secretly gay and trying to put distance between him and Amy.

The more Jake thinks about it, though, the more he wants to tell somebody.

Gina would be a good candidate. She’s already heard enough from him to probably suspect something, and she’s not straight as a ruler herself.

Charles is a definite _no_. He can’t keep a secret to save his life, even if he is possibly the most supportive person Jake’s ever met.

Rosa is an obvious choice, being a sister-in-arms. She takes secrets to the grave, too, so Jake would never have to tell another living soul.

There are several people that would be there for him, if Jake took the step. But there’s the slim possibility that they _won’t_ be there for him, and that’s enough to keep Jake from opening his mouth.

 

He almost tells Holt.

It’s a spur-of-the-moment thought, a rash one, and Jake barely restrains himself.

Holt’s pulled him into his office for a debrief about a case, and he’s been talking for a while and Jake feels like he’s going to explode and interrupts him to ask a rushed, “How did you come out?”

Holt stops, pausing with his glasses halfway off his nose.

Jake tries to make casual eye contact, but he knows that Holt knows something is up. “I mean, to like, your coworkers. Friends. How did you tell them?”

“Why the sudden interest in my personal life?” Holt asks.

“I’m never _not_ interested in your personal life,” Jake scoffs. “You’re an enigma. A beautiful labyrinth. An expert-level sudoku puzzle.”

Holt’s watching him very carefully, and Jake stares at the pens on his desk instead.

There’s a long, heavy pause.

“Good talk,” Jake says, full of false bravado, and he gets up and leaves as fast as he can.

 

“Is there something you want to tell me, babe?” Amy asks, right when Jake climbs into bed after brushing his teeth.

Jake wants to tell her _everything._

“What? Why?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

Amy shrugs, and sets her newspaper down on the bedside table. “Holt just told me you have some stuff you’re working through right now.”

She must see him go through the seven stages of grief in the span of two seconds, because she sits up a little and says, “He didn’t _say_ what’s wrong, if you told him something in private, he just said I should keep an eye on you.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Jake asks, snorting. He’s overdoing it, she can tell he’s covering for something.

Amy knows him well enough that she just shrugs and lets it go. “I’m here when you’re ready.”

“Thanks, Ames,” Jake says, and burrows into the blankets and decides to never emerge again.

 

Turns out, Drunk Jake takes care of things for him. He’s out with Rosa, who brought her girlfriend, and Terry, who has a rare night off. Amy wanted to have dinner with her mom, and Jake got the vibe that he wasn’t invited this time.

Which is cool, as long as it’s not because Amy thinks he’s a deeply closeted gay man who’s going to ruin their marriage. This is part of the reason why Jake’s seven drinks in and definitely feeling like he’s getting to the point of intoxication where he willingly recounts past trauma.

Rosa’s went with her girlfriend to the bathroom—girls always go in packs, but Jake doesn’t even want to consider what else goes on in there—and Jake is slumped at a table with Terry watching him.

“Seems like you’ve had a rough week,” Terry says, because he’s a dad who doesn’t know how to turn it off.

“Same old.” Jake rests his head on one hand. The table is looking like an extremely comfortable place to take a nap, but he doesn’t think Terry will let him clear the glasses away to lay down, so. “I think I wanna tell you something, Terry.”

“What’s up, Jake?”

Jake looks up at him and takes a deep breath and finally says, “I’m bi.”

Terry raises his eyebrows and puts his glass of Pepsi down.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Jake says, a little too rushed and almost intelligible. “I haven’t—nobody can know, it’s not really a big deal—“

“It seems like a big deal for you,” Terry says, and his eyebrows crease in concern. “Thank you for trusting me, but. Jake, it’s okay. You’re allowed to let this be a big deal.”

“I can’t make this into a thing,” Jake says, pleading for Terry to understand. “Amy would—Amy’s _parents_ would—“

“Amy loves you,” Terry tells him. He looks like he wants to say something else, but then Rosa and her girlfriend return—Rosa’s girlfriend definitely has a name that Jake is too embarrassed to ask for again—and Terry lets it go. Jake decides he loves Terry and his subtlety.

 

Being out to someone is nice. Nicer than Jake thought it would be. On Monday, the next time he sees Terry, Terry looks up and gives him a smile in greeting and Jake feels a little less nervous about, well, life. He’s mostly just glad that coming out didn’t join the list of three hundred and fourteen things he regrets doing while drunk.

It felt _good_ to tell someone, which is kind of invalidating his whole excuse of there being no point in telling anyone else. Despite the fact that his bisexuality is irrelevant, at this point, he’s glad Terry knows, for some reason.

Which means he’s going to tell someone else. Might as well ride the confidence train until it crashes.

 

The confidence train is chugging along smoothly up until Rosa is standing right in front of Jake in the evidence locker, at which point Jake loses his nerve and laughs sort of hysterically and tells Rosa it was a prank.

She doesn’t believe him. She gets in his way and doesn’t let him leave.

“Rosa, I was just kidding,” he says, but they can both hear the desperation in his voice.

“No,” she says. She crosses her arms and nods her head at him. “Out with it.”

Jake thinks maybe if he starts crying she’ll get uncomfortable, and it works. He just lets a few tears leak out, and Rosa says “Oh, shit, okay. That’s fine, tell me later,” and she ducks out of the room, abandoning the situation completely.

 

He makes dinner that evening. More accurately, he puts a frozen lasagna in the oven and runs the cardboard box out to the dumpster to pretend like he made it, and then he has to run back out to the dumpster to check how long the lasagna is supposed to cook.

Amy’s onto him, because he’s still sort of wheezing from running up and down the stairs twice. She’s very complimentary of the dish, but she tweets the compliments to the official Stouffer’s Twitter account instead of saying them to Jake’s face. Jake is in love with her.

His leg is bouncing up and down very quickly, and he keeps spacing out and staring at his fork instead of using it to eat. Amy reaches out and puts a hand on his, and he looks up at her and realizes that he needs to take this step.

“I need to tell you something,” he blurts. “And you need to promise it won’t change anything.”

Amy tilts her head a little and nods. She doesn’t look surprised. Maybe this has been a long time coming, for her. Jake can’t think about that right now. “You look so nervous,” she says, and smiles to put him at ease. “It’s okay, Jake.”

“You don’t know that. I’m--ugh.” He smacks himself in the forehead. “I’m being stupid.”

Amy laughs. “You’re not being stupid.”

“Yeah, I’m being stupid, because this isn’t a _thing_ , I don’t need to make everything about me and this doesn’t even really matter, because it’s not going to come up, so like, why is Jake being so weird about this? Because Jake is a drama queen and he needs to have issues about everything--”

“Jake.” Amy scoots her chair around the table to sit next to him. It takes a minute or so, and it’s almost humorous enough to pull Jake out of his panic spiral. “Hey. You’re allowed to let this be a big thing.”

Jake rolls his eyes, mostly to try and lighten the mood, but he thinks he’s about to cry for the second time today. Is it a bisexual thing, to be crying all the time? Jake isn’t sure he wants to fling himself out of the closet anymore.

“It’s just…” Jake looks down at where Amy has taken both of his hands in hers, where her engagement ring is sitting and thinks about how he’s about to complicate things like never before. “I’m bisexual,” he says.

There’s a beat of quiet.

“Can you look at me, please?” Amy says.

Jake drags his eyes up, and she’s smiling.

“Me too,” she says, and Jake slumps into her with the most relieved hug he’s ever given a person in his life.


End file.
